


you said we'd have forever

by purplefennels7



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Character Study, M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 17:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8253788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplefennels7/pseuds/purplefennels7
Summary: Maedhros, without Fingon, isn’t Maedhros at all. A small character study ft. why Maedhros jumped.





	

_Fingon, you said we’d have forever!_

Maedhros stared down at the flames leaping before him, brutally chopped hair swaying in the wind. These flames...oh, they took him back to another set of flames, hundreds of years ago, the flames of the Balrogs’ whips as they cut his Fingon down.

He remembered every detail of that day in such clarity, the very day that he was trying to forget. So many deaths, all of his own people, seemed to pale in comparison to the only one that mattered. It was always Fingon’s face haunting his dreams, always Fingon’s cries echoing in his ears. There were so many memories...too many, and that, Maedhros supposed, was why he was here. Why he was standing above a chasm in the earth, a Silmaril burning in his hand, and unevenly cut hair flying about his face. Everything reminded him of something he and Fingon had shared, every place in his kingdom was tainted by that disease. Even his hair was a reminder of all he had lost, because the day he returned home without Fingon riding triumphant by his side was the same day that he’d cut his hair.

* * *

_Maedhros sat in front of the mirror in his chambers, carefully braiding his red hair into Fingon’s favorite pattern. A dagger, honed to a wicked edge, laid on the the table next to him. A single golden clasp glittered innocently on the vanity, taunting him with its own memories. Fingon, every night, unbraiding his hair and leaving that clasp on the table before slipping into bed beside Maedhros. Maedhros paused for only a moment before he picked up the clasp and clipped it to the end of his own plait, then plucked the dagger from the table and turned it slowly, watching the sunlight gleam off the edges of the seal of the House of Nolofinwe._

I can’t keep going like this.

_The dagger flashed, and Maedhros’s braid was falling to the floor in a shimmer of blood-red; the dagger flew across the room and embedded itself in the oaken door. He didn’t bother evening it out, making it presentable; he couldn’t be bothered to care. The jagged, uneven edge matched the half of his heart that had been left on the plains beneath Thangorodrim, trampled into a mire of blood and left to rot._

_And finally, Maedhros allowed himself to cry, the tears pooling on the stone floor with the shimmering red waves of hair._

* * *

Red had always defined the house of Feanor. But for Maedhros, it was just one more thing that he couldn’t think about anymore, not now. Red was the color of flame, the flames of the Balrogs’ whips, the flames he was looking down upon. Red was the color of blood, miring the battlefield and defiling the hopeful, shining blues and silvers of Fingon’s banners.

He took a step forward, teetering at the very edge of the chasm. Fingon never would’ve wanted this. Fingon would’ve wanted Maedhros to keep living. But Maedhros was already gone, just a husk of his old self, defined only by what he had lost.

  _B_ _ut Fingon is gone_ , Maedhros thought, and took the last step.


End file.
